Malaysia: Budget 2011 Announced

Yesterday, Prime Minister Najib Razak, who also holds the Finance portfolio, unveiled the Budget 2011 that lays down the economic plans of the country for the next few years.

Among the highlights of the Budget are: plans to build another six highways and a 100-storey tower, implementing a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) transportation system in Kuala Lumpur, building new hospitals, increasing the number of doctors, nurses and medical supplies as well as to enhance English and Bahasa Malaysia proficiency.

Although the Prime Minister had obtained wishlists from citizens in his blog, overall feedback on the budget has been largely negative.

Blogger I Am Malaysian is just one of many who do not see the need to build a 100-storey tower:

Everybody wants a tallest tower. So we should do it too. Oh, but wait, there is definitely no way we will be building the tallest tower with this 100-storey building, because Burj Khalifa is more than 160 storeys high. So since we’re not in it to break any world records this time round, why are we doing this again?

Blogger James Ooi also lamented that despite the proposal to turn the country into a high income economy, he feels that with inflation his purchasing power is constantly decreasing.

However, blogger Eric Yong felt that the Budget was going in the right direction.

It does seem like it is very encouraging for the country's economy. With the region's outlook looking sluggish, Malaysia would be pretty ambitious to be announcing quite a massive budget, but this is quite an achievable target as well.

The full text of the Prime Minister's speech can be found here, and the highlights of Budget 2011 can be found here.

Thumbnail is from the Flickr page of ~ezs used under CC License Attribution 2.0 Generic

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